The culture of San Francisco is a mix between residential family life, busy corporate business and local business enterprise, paired with an unusual array of attractions for the tourist slog. If you want a workout without entering a gym, San Francisco is your place: the streets roll up and down, with some incredibly steep slopes. It is as organised as a haphazardly organised city could be. Houses sit perched at the top of high hills, and more houses line the hill along the way up and down it. In the heart of the city, streets break off in all directions. You will find plenty of family-owned coffee shops and curated book stores. Reach the outer edges of the city, however, and you will be braced with the sea port. Here, tourists flock to throw their money at buskers and talented performers, at over-priced merchandise, and at gloriously tempting food and ice-cream. The builds are usually two colours not one, and in designed in colour block. The old buildings blend in as much as the newer builders when there is a repeated pattern of old and new side by side, but this unexpected blend can be attributed to the fact that its buildings are a of an architectural style that is a little European meets French. San Francisco meets your expectations: the nostalgic trolley, the distinctively red bridge and hills upon hills to explore and unexpected corners to turn. 

 

On my first day, I ventured into China Town. Most US cities I had travelled to had one nested between its different districts, but San Francisco really puts the Town in China Town. It is boasted as the largest China Town outside of Asia and it certainly lives up to its name! Beyond its grand entrance, there lay streets and streets of Chinese businesses selling everything from homeopathic medicines to bulks and baskets of live and raw foods that I had never seen before, to lavish oriental dresses sparkling in the store front. First, I strolled down the more tourist street, Grant Avenue, and then ventured down the more local haunts of Weller Street and other side streets. All my senses were summoned to life as I walked through the area. I walked by small, perhaps slightly unhygienic stores, that were heaving with Chinese locals hunting out insects, herbs, raw plants, dried algae and the like. I could recognise nothing in their medicine shops – they were piled high with packages upon packages of medicines and remedies. They were as packed and as disorganised as an old book store; but like a book store, its arrangement made complete sense to the shop owner and frequent visiter but for the novel customer, was perhaps overwhelming and un-navigable. That’s where the shop owner’s expertise came in. Bag pipes playing out Anglo-Saxon anthems could be heard passing a small alleyway, a strange yet subtle reminder that this was not really China at all but just your cultural enclave in Western USA. Plentiful restaurants and bubble tea cafes were popular too. China Town was an unexpected, cultural, removed, amusing and busy district of San Francisco.

 

A well-known book store in San Francisco is the City Lights Bookstore. It lies on a street where Broadway street and Columbus Avenue intersect. This huge intersection sits quite high up and opens out to give you a great view of the City that pokes out between the wide intersections and streets. It was an interesting mix of architecture along this street: one tiny old building had a very European character whilst just next to it, there would be tall skyscrapers. 

 

I had heard of a ‘secret’ passageway up to Coit Tower, a popular lookout point for tourists with 360 views of the city. I ventured through the streets with my usual curious eyes and found the beginning of the steps up to Coit Tower. The steps were very secluded, hidden between rows of houses. The steps were buried into the hill of the houses. There was scarcely other faces nearby except the occasional couple and runners tackling the challenging incline; it was not a well-know spot for tourists and only locals were passing by. The physical activity of US citizens is something I noticed a lot whilst travelling the US – although the continent has a notorious reputation of being an unhealthy, inactive and overweight population, I discovered that within urban cities, this was far from true to the eyes. I witnessed many locals keeping active just out on the streets in the sunshine, whether running, biking, or taking part in outdoor fitness classes. It changed my perspective on how generalised the nation is, since many cities have developed a culture of keeping active.

 

But back to the stairs: as I climbed, I would peer behind me and staring back was the gorgeous blue ocean. Every ten steps or so, there would be a gate where you could break off from the stairs and enter down a path and find several houses dotted along, just perching hidden in these hills. The houses were covered in vines. Their home-grown gardens were filled with colourful, vibrant plant; bushes surrounded them; and flower pots were placed on the window sills. The houses were adorably tucked away into some mysterious hilly geography. The steps were very steep. Eventually, after smelling the odd plant and marvelling at the ocean, I reached the top and found Coit Tower, joining the familiar swamps of tourists who'd taken a more trodden route. Before entering the tower, the view was already something to marvel at. The entire city lay before my eyes in vivid 3D – because it wasn’t like the flat structure of the UK, the 3D-ness was distinctively eye-catching. I marvelled at a similar view from the tower and at a very affordable student price which is always a bonus.

 

As you may have begun to realise, this was almost an entire day of walking. I walked a lot of the city in this one day, from one district to another. Having been to China Town and walked up to the tower, I then walked to the edge of the city where Fisherman’s Wharf was, specifically Pier 39. If I could compare it to any UK city, it would be Blackpool, but Americanised x10. I briefly joined a large crowd where the seals flapped their flippers and squealed out for its audience. 

 

After exploring, I headed back towards the centre to visit Lombard street. It is known as the windiest or “Crookedest Street” in the world. Wikipedia accurately describes it as “an east–west street in San Francisco that is famous for a steep, one-block section with eight hairpin turns”. It is a residential-like cobbled street beautified with immaculately trimmed bushes and beautiful gardens, making for a pretty display of art work and worthwhile Instragram or drone shot. It is such a popular sight that a road traffic assistant permanently guides traffic to make sure the windiest street in the world still functions as just that, a street.

 

After a long day of walking, I settled into the hostel and spoke with a French guest there. We shared our thoughts of San Francisco over her pineapple-flavoured herbal tea. Yes, pineapple. Even without trying, we can discover something new.

 

On day two, I took myself on a tour around Haight-Ashbury. I had downloaded an app called Detour, which you can use to download tours to your mobile. It is very clever and innovative. There were about three different tours for San Francisco. For any you choose, once downloaded, you simply plug in your headphones and be guided by the audio. You follow its directions around the area and when you reach each destination, the audio bite plays automatically for that spot. It will keep guiding you to each stop on the tour and pause until you arrive at that stop. The self-guided tour costs just $5 to download and is a great way to get immersed in the tour yourself, to explore on your own terms and to take your time. Haight-Ashbury was a blast to the past, harbouring memories from the good ol’ days of rock n’ roll, drugs and hippie culture. The tour began outside a small home, where I was instructed to open up a box with a hidden key and find inside it all sorts of random items. The tour gradually took me through the places where music and hippie culture was born: the book store, the medical centre, the “first free” store, and even into the park besides its famous Eucalyptus trees. Just underneath the 4:20 clock (fixed on 4:20 to symbolise a specific time of day associated with taking drugs), there sat several mellow hippies smoking a joint. The tour prompted me to ask for a large A2 book behind the book store counter. Inside were photographs of Haight-Ashbury back in the high days. Later on, the tour took me to the same buildings from the photographs that were once swamped with huge crowds to see the music artists, now as unrecognisable as the rest of the buildings. There were many boutique and vintage stores in the area, which ironically contrasts with the “free” mantra that they attempted to establish back in the day. Was I asked to smoke up whilst walking through Haight-Ashbury's streets? Yes, of course (and denied naturally...that wasn't part of the tour). 

 

After the tour, I walked through Golden Gate Park. The park is enormous, consuming 1,017 acres of ground. The park is like its own miniature city. It draws a variety of crowds: a jazz band practicing in a tunnel under a small bridge, cyclists or runners, old couples strolling through the rose garden, or young children playing in the kiddies areas. It is more than just your average park. There is a museum, a flower conservatory, a music concourse, the California Academy of Science, a Japanese Tea Garden, and much more. Outside of the de Young museum, which is dedicated to the Summer of Love, street lamps are shaped like tall spoons that had street signs attached to them reading “Free Love” to the right, “Civil Rights” to the left, “Black Lives Matter” and “Hipster” as if pointing in directions like any usual street signs. Imagine it - "please follow the signs for Black Lives Matter then take a left to reach Free Love". At a distance, a man banged on his Congo drums whose sound echoed around this dome shaped area of the park. Every corner I turned, there was more land and more open space. I could have spent all day in the park.

 

San Francisco loves their sushi. I spotted sushi within every 10 yards I walked. There are many great hang outs for eating, but the good stuff comes at a hefty price. Everything is more expensive in San Francisco, whether its ice cream or clothes. It is the price you pay to land a career in the infamous tech-savvy world of Silicon Valley. On my travels, I had met several people who were from San Francisco and were, unsurprisingly, software engineers. Without my having commented, they added “Yeah, I know, very standard,” which implied there were many more like him in the city. Even outside of Palo Alto, I felt like that wafer-thin technology bubble was building itself around me.